Increasing the capacity of wireless networks involves large capital outlays. Accordingly, wireless network operators employ network capacity design tools to estimate the number of base sites and base radios required to support customer demands for voice and data traffic.
One conventional capacity planning tool forecasts how many cell sites and base radios are required for a single market. This tool includes great detail on computation of control channel usage, reserved time slots and other network features. This capacity planning tool took longer than an hour to forecast one market for only one year. Although this tool is useful for predicting the location and timing for new base radios installations, it cannot handle the volume of computations needed to forecast nationwide results in a reasonable amount of time.